Financing Unemployment Insurance
نویسندگان
چکیده
Following the Great Recession, most states’ unemployment insurance (UI) trust funds became insolvent, requiring the states to borrow from the U.S. Treasury to finance benefit payments. This article describes the basics of UI financing and reviews the origins of the financial crisis facing the federal-state UI system. It then examines the main components of the UI payroll tax—the taxable wage base and the experience-rated payroll tax—and considers how these might be modified to avoid future widespread insolvency. We conclude with some speculative remarks on the future of UI financing. JEL Classification Codes: H2, J65
منابع مشابه
Introducing Unemployment Insurance to Developing Countries
Introducing Unemployment Insurance to Developing Countries The paper identifies key labor market and institutional differences between developed and developing countries, analyzes how these differences affect the working of the standard, OECD-style unemployment insurance (UI) program, and derives a desirable design of unemployment benefit program in developing countries. It argues that these co...
متن کاملUnemployment Insurance
Unemployment insurance (UI) provides temporary income support to workers who have lost their jobs and are seeking reemployment. This paper reviews the origins of the federal-state UI system in the United States and outlines its principles and goals. It also describes the conditions for benefit eligibility, the benefits themselves, and their financing through the UI payroll tax. The UI system is...
متن کاملHealth Insurance and “Unemployment Lock”: evidence from China
The potential impact of health insurance on labor mobility has been extensively studied in the U.S. and elsewhere. As health insurance becomes a more important means of financing health care, and as individual choice is playing a greater role in allocating labor, this issue is beginning to be recognized in China as well. In this paper, we investigate the effects of the introduction of the subsi...
متن کاملRelationship between the retirement, disability, and unemployment insurance programs: the U.S. experience.
This article was prepared initially for an international conference of social security program administrators and researchers. They examined the reasons for, and implications of, a recent trend in several European countries toward making it easier to qualify for retirement or disability benefits as a way of alleviating long-term unemployment. The article notes that the United States has not fol...
متن کاملImproving the Equity-Efficiency Trade-Off: Mandatory Savings Accounts for Social Insurance
In the modern welfare state a substantial part of an individual’s tax bill is transferred back to the same individual taxpayer in the form of social transfers. This provides a rationale for financing part of social insurance through mandatory savings accounts. We analyze the behavioral and welfare effects of compulsory savings accounts in an intertemporal model with uncertainty, endogenous invo...
متن کامل